


Letters to Sirius Black

by Elva_VanHelsing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Years Later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elva_VanHelsing/pseuds/Elva_VanHelsing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>19 years later, all was well. <br/>It all went downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't worked on this story in a while but recently decided to pick it up again. Any feedback, tips, or general opinions are greatly appreciated. Also took a couple of liberties with some of the magic in order to solve a couple problems I couldn't solve in universe (that I'm aware)

       The Whomping Willow was older than anyone knew. Its bark was greying and scarred, and its roots had sunken deep into the hill on which it grew. And at this moment, contrary to its name, it was quite still. Only a slight movement stirred its branches, as if it were breathing. The girl that stood before it, almost the only one who could approach the Willow without being set upon by its thick, lashing branches, pressed her hand to the old bark, her fingers tracing some of the old scars. The girl, despite having far fewer years behind her, was almost as scarred as the tree.

“You can’t hide there forever, filthy blood-traitor!” They girl’s grey-blue eyes narrowed and her fingers dragged down the bark to the wand in her pocket. Her tormentor grew impatient quickly, turning to storm back to the castle after only a moment, and as his footsteps receded into her empty surroundings, the girl relaxed slightly. She stood in the silence for a long time before finally she leaned against the tree, her cheek pressed to the bark.

Her voice was soft, and carried more sorrow than one alone should have to bear, “All is not well.”


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1  
~Two years later~  
Father,  
In my fifth year here at Hogwarts, I feel more alone than ever. My year away was a miracle, a life saver even if I couldn’t use magic, but I’m not giving up here. So I came back to the day-to-day Hell of hatred so strong I can feel its weight threatening to crush me. It’s a disease, this hatred. Such short memories for the good they seem to have, Shakespeare was right, “the sins are to be laid upon the children.” It makes us stronger though, right? So we- or I, at least- keep going until they let it go, or we break…  
It’s so hard though, some days…  
Sincerely yours,  
Chara

The last James had seen of his father or mother had been at the start of his third year, when he’d watched from a passenger cabin with Fred as Harry and Ginny Potter waved farewell to their youngest son as he rode away on the Hogwarts Express for his first year. At the time, James had felt a twinge of jealousy at that. Now though, things had changed. As the train pulled out of the station, the countryside slowly picking up speed as it whipped by the windows, James was filled with dread at the thought of another year, and perhaps just a hint of guilt at his earlier jealousy.  
Fred though, was a different matter. He sat in a dimly lit corner of the cabin with his wand pointed at his bright red hair while the other boys were out, distracted by someone’s newest prank.  
“Colorvaria,” he murmured the word and in a flash of red light, his hair turned a dirty shade of brown. “I swear, that gets harder every year.” James started to reply, tearing his gaze from the passing scenery, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, the other boys crowded noisily back into the cabin.  
“Hey, you’ll never believe who we just saw!” James, having closed his mouth, exchanged a confused glance with Fred before looking back at them.  
“Who?”  
“The blood-traitor, the freak from House Black.” James paled slightly at their words, his voice barely a whisper when he finally spoke.  
“I can’t believe she’d come back.” Miss Black would be held in high regards if it weren’t for the unfortunate matter of her last name. She was a very talented witch, an extremely artistic musical prodigy, and quite attractive, but as things stood, her talents meant nothing to the wizarding world. After the events of her second year, she became the only child related to the Order of the Phoenix to refuse to hide; a part of James admired her for that.  
“I thought she’d dropped out for sure,” James dragged his attention back to the conversation, keeping his mouth shut as the other boys continued.  
“Was she the same?” Fred finally asked out of curiosity and a couple of the boys let out a nervous laugh.  
“She threatened to hex us before we could get so much as a hello in.” James highly doubted that they had actually meant to say hello and he was fairly certain Miss Black would’ve known that as well so he couldn’t really blame her, but he didn’t see much of a point in saying as much. “She’s in our classes this year, we’ll have plenty of chances to get her back…” As they continued scheming their ‘revenge’ in excited voices, James tried desperately to tune them out for the rest of the long ride to the castle. 

 

Defense Against the Dark Arts never failed to be one of the more entertaining classes of the year, though after their OWLS exams, more of the classes seemed to be catered towards James’s own requests and that little competition was getting harder to choose a winner for. The professor surveyed the room full of students with a sharp, hawk-like gaze before nodding as if in affirmation that he had their attention and beginning the lesson.  
“You will divide into pairs. Facing your partner, one of you will attempt -and I do mean attempt- to jinx the other without speaking the spell aloud. The other will attempt to repel the jinx in equal silence. After each attempt, swap.” He waved a hand, as if shooing them into motion, “Find your partner.” Immediately the room erupted into a lively dash for partners until the class stood divided into two lines of students standing about ten paces apart and facing each other, waiting for the professor’s signal to begin. All of the students except the youngest in the room, a girl of just 16 with long, black hair and unmistakeable piercing grey~blue eyes.   
“Professor MacDougall?” When she spoke, her voice was quiet and level, but still it caused the room to fall into an uneasy silence. Professor MacDougal turned his sharp gaze on her and instantly it softened slightly.  
“Miss Black.” He gestured for her to continue.  
“It seems you have an odd number of students this year.” He glanced around the room once before nodding slightly and breathing an exaggerated sigh.  
“Very well, as this assignment doesn’t translate well into a group of three, you will practice with me as your opponent,” at the girl’s slight nod, he gave the slightest smirk before the two of them lined up in the same manner as the rest of the room, only now, everyone else stood in silent fascination. “To begin, you will attempt to repel my spell. Are you ready, Miss Black?” She gave a slight nod and instantly the air between them turned serious, their expressions set in fixed masks as they raised their wands. With a slight upward flick of McDougall's wand there was a flash of green light, but with a flick of her own wrist, Miss Black nullified the spell almost immediately after it’d been cast. Another flick of his wrist and another, his wand flashing white, then green, and back again as he seemed to be casting every relatively harmless jinx he knew, each time only to have it immediately negated or blocked by Miss Black until finally, with a quick flick of her wand to one side, the tip of her wand flashed a light turquoise and Professor MacDougal was instantly frozen in place. After casting a sharp glance around the room at the crowd that had formed to watch their sparring match, Miss Black negated her own jinx with a slight flick of her wrist and MacDougal let out a delighted chuckle as the other students returned to their own practice. “So you kept up on your practice after all,” he smiled at the girl and she flashed a sheepish grin.  
“I wasn’t going to let all of that free time I had go to waste.” James, Fred, and the other boys moved out of earshot before lining up again to practice.  
“Did you hear her over there? She’s just a bloody show off with a massive ego.” One of the boys muttered as he tried and failed to cast a jinx nonverbally for the first time.  
“It’s not like she asked to be paired with Professor MacDougall.” James was so focused on deflecting Fred’s attempt to make him sprout antlers that he forgot to keep the words to himself. The other boys were on him in a split second, forgetting their own practice to crowd around him.  
“So what, you’re defending the filth now?” James swallowed and stepped back, trying in vain to regain his personal space.  
“N-No,” he shook his head in disbelief, “I was just saying that had someone else been the odd one out, the Professor would work with us just like he did her.” His answer didn’t seem to appease them as much as he’d hoped, so he scrambled on, “Look, she’s a bloody Black, what reason would I have to defend that blood-traitor?” If hearing his friends use those words to describe her and people like her made him sick, using them himself made it far worse. In fact, for a moment after, Fred simply stared at him. The other boys seemed to buy it though, so James exhaled slowly. Then after what seemed to be a moment’s thought, one of the boys looked back at him with a cruel look in his eyes and wore a small crooked smile.  
“Then you won’t mind being the one to carry out our plan for revenge.” James blinked in surprise.  
“What?” As ineloquent as it was, it was the only thing he could get himself to say.  
“Tonight, we were going to get her alone and hit her with a something that hurts, to make sure she never talks back to us again.” He could do nothing but stare as the boy continued, the others snickering and whispering quietly in their excitement, “You’d be perfect for it, you can just follow her from your potions class until you pass through somewhere quiet and BAM!” Fred jumped and James flinched when the boy slammed his fist into his other hand in emphasis, “Hit her with Sectumsempra.” For a long time, James simply stared at them in shocked silence, not sure how to respond to the mad plan they’d come up with.  
“Sectumsempra?” He spoke softly and the boys nodded, smiling to themselves, “You know that’ll probably kill her, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for a reply, “There’s no bloody way I’m using that spell in her, I’m not getting expelled and barred from using magic because you wanted to prove a point and went way overboard.” The boys stared at him; he didn’t usually speak against them on things like this.   
“You mean you’re too much of a coward to do it.” It wasn’t a question, but still James started to reply.   
“No, I mean-”   
“He means,” Fred cut him off before he could say something he’d later regret, “if we’re doing this, and if you want us to have any part in it, you’ll do it our way.” After another moment’s thought, the boys agreed and they began going back and forth with Fred, trying to come to an agreement on what spell would do the trick.   
“Fiendfyre, and that’s as tame as we’ll go,” the boy that spoke flashed a cruel grin at James, “not that we think you could produce it, let alone control it.” James’s hazel gaze narrowed slightly at the thinly veiled challenge.  
“You’d be surprised.” His voice was uncharacteristically low as he couldn’t resist the temptation to show off, if even a little.  
“If you mean by how much you scream when that spell turns around to eat you, then yeah, maybe we will be.” Fred frowned slightly, a rare look for him.  
“Did you know they put him in Elemental Mastery this year, for fire? If anyone can control it, it’ll be him.” Whether they agreed because they wanted to see James’s spell fail, or because Fred’s words had actually convinced them, the pair would never know.  
“Alright, Bones, let's say we believe you. Either way, we’ll find out if ‘the great James Cattermole’ is as great as you two seem to think when you actually try it tonight.” Fred nodded his agreement and the group split back up into their pairs. After that conversation, James found himself upside down or with antlers on more than one occasion as he couldn’t seem to focus on the Jinxes and Anti-Jinxes without his mind drifting back to Miss Black and a nagging fear of everything else that could possibly go wrong that day.  
Despite his wishes, the rest of the day seemed to go by incredibly fast, with Potions being no exception. After the Professor dismissed them for the day, James followed Miss Black after a few minutes had passed her leaving. Fred met him outside the door, but the other boys had apparently decided to wait for them on the way to the Ravenclaw wing where she was supposed to have been going. Instead, she seemed to be wandering aimlessly through the halls humming a rather sad melody to no one in particular. After a long time following her, Fred stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and dropped one of his books. As the sound echoed through the vast, empty stone hall and the girl stopped mid stride, time seemed to stand still.  
“Why have you been following me?” She didn’t turn when she finally broke the silence, “Come to poke more fun at the scum of the school?” James had only heard her talk once before she’d disappeared for a year, and her voice had been soft and sad, but now it was cold enough to send a chill down his spine and carried an edge sharp enough to slice through the air like a knife.  
“No…” James couldn’t seem to find the words for a reply, so for the briefest moment he was glad when one of the other boys finally managed to find them.  
“We came to make sure you never talk to us like you did on the train again.” He growled the words and the girl looked back at him over her shoulder, her grey eyes filled with boredom.  
“I’m sorry, who are you again?” Her quiet question only enraged the boy further and he dragged James forward by the arm.  
“Go on, do it!” James swallowed, glancing back at Fred with a brief look of guilt before he pulled his wand from his back pocket and lifted it slowly so that it pointed at the girl at the far end of the hall. It took him a minute or two before he could force himself to look up at her again, but when he finally did, he couldn’t tear his gaze away. She stood facing him now, her hands in her pockets as she watched him with something like amusement in her eyes and in the smirk that played at the corner of her mouth. With a slight flick of his wrist, James cast the spell to cause a jet of blazing fire to pour from the tip of his wand in a neverending stream. The fire blazed to life, climbing higher until it had completely blocked her from his view and the beasts within the flames began at his will to twist into a blazing lion, its’ mane brushing the walls of the room as it let out a ferocious roar and leapt hungrily forward. They expected to hear screams, but they never came. Fred opened his eyes slowly and stared toward the far end of the hall from his place a bit behind James. The boy that had until now stood wide eyed at James’s spell now seemed as though a fish trying to breath out of water.  
“Bloody hell…” It had taken him so long to say those words that James almost applauded. Instead he stared past the flames as a blinding silvery light erupted from the far end of the hall and the three of them caught a glimpse of a wolf like beast the size of a bull as it attacked the great lion. James lowered his wand, subconsciously stopping the stream of fire that had poured from it as they watched the beast sink it’s teeth into the flaming lion, dragging it down despite the size difference and not letting go until the flames had died out. “Bloody hell,” the boy’s powers of speech were less impressive the second time around and the girl only gave him a passing glance as she watched him turn tail and run before she and her beast approached James and Fred. The silvery beast’s braided tail lashed from side to side and it’s wicked sharp claws made no sound, but the snarl that escaped its bared teeth was very real. The girl on the other hand, seemed as though nothing had happened at all.  
“Your friend there is all talk, isn’t he.” It wasn’t really a question, more of a passing remark as she studied the two of them.  
“I-I’m sorry, I-” James began, but one sharp look from her and he lost his ability to speak.  
“Look,” her beast snarled again, as if in emphasis, “I don’t know what excuses you have for attacking me, and honestly I don’t really care. What I do know, is that if you mess with me again, it won’t be a Patronus Charm I’ll be using to counter, it’ll be something worse.” With those words she turned to start walking away, her patronus dissolving into a mist as she slid her wand back into her pocket. “Oh, one more thing,” she paused and glance back at them, “I do actually have a name, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop calling me blood-traitor and filth.” Her words were so absurd that all Fred and James could do in response was nod slightly and stare after her as she disappeared around the next corner.

Fred and James didn’t see much of Miss Black in the few classes they shared the next week or so and even less of her outside of them; of course this was, supposedly, a good thing, it meant nothing had changed. By some complete stroke of luck she hadn’t told anyone about the incident, either. James had finally decided to ask her why she hadn’t reported him that Friday after they were released from Potions, but as he made to follow her out the door he was jostled by another student and she was gone. It should’ve been impossible for her to get far in such a short amount of time, and yet she was nowhere in the halls nearby. This only left outside, but the sun was setting quickly and all that was out there was…  
The Whomping Willow. All of those rumours that Miss Black would hide at the base of the willow when the bullying would get particularly bad and James hadn’t thought she might have been headed there. He pulled open the nearest door out of the castle, pausing at the draft of chilly air that rushed to meet him before he slipped out into the dusk to look. 

Miss Black sat comfortably at the base of the Whomping Willow, finding comfort in the quiet rustling of its leaves as it seemed to breath. She closed her eyes, listening as she waited for the sun to slip beyond the horizon so that the nocturnal beasts of the Dark Forest would be waiting in the woods for her. She’d been fascinated with the Dark Forest since she’d first woken up from her twenty-three year slumber, it’d been so full of life, and she didn’t care if it was dangerous. She’d started cataloguing them in one of her notebooks, but eventually she’d run out of new ones to watch during the day, so now she had to visit at night, when the Forest truly lived up to it’s name.  
The dark had never really scared her though.  
“Miss Black?” She looked up in surprise as James approached the edge of the willow’s reach, “What’re you doing out here?” She blinked; there was no harm in answering, she supposed.  
“I’m waiting for the sun to set. I was planning on going on a little bit of a hike.”


End file.
